At 7:30 a.m., we head to church.
At 7:15 a.m., the phone rings and Thelma asks if I would mind waiting to go to church until she arrives with Ruthmila, who has come from Aruba for her grandma’s funeral yesterday. She is staying with Thelma. Of course.
After Mass, Annet arrives, who would like to visit Stella to see her plants.
The garden continues to amaze me, with beautiful flowers under a canopy of shade from the trees, the ducks in the cage, the chickens, the peacock. The old furniture. I think Stella is better suited to this place, perhaps because she has family from the Netherlands staying with her and has more company.
Back home.
Huh? Mama Irma isn’t there. Mem tells us that they’re in the car on their way to the marshe di Barber.
A miracle! Mama has – with help, of course – got into the car and is going to the market in Barber.
Then Mem and I go for a drive around Banda Abou, including to the Kitten Rescue in Soto, where Connie does volunteer work. There must be a hundred cats there! Connie shows us the different rooms, including the operating theatre where the cats are neutered.
Then we drive to Coral Cliff, Santa Martha, where Corendon is building a couple of huge hotels. It’s terrible to see how nature is being disrupted there. Tourism is growing and growing.
Then we go to Landhuis Klein Santa Martha. Coffee, awa lamoenchi and a beautiful view. We talk to a lady there who is also very concerned about the developments surrounding tourism; there is no nature left.
Then back home, but first a quick stop at the changing room at the football field. Hey… there’s Norma. We have a beer, chat with Norma and then go home.
Mama Irma has visitors: Stella and her sister Frida. Ruthmila and Thelma tell us that Mama Irma ate sopi mondongo at the Marshe di Barber and then jambo again when she got home… A miracle…
Zaire calls and asks if she can come swimming.
Sure!
Half past four!
Then Erna and Magalie come to visit. I know Magalie from church. A beautiful, tall woman who used to walk with a crutch, new hip, and later with her arm in a sling, torn tendon in her shoulder after a fall at Porto Marie. Both lovely people. Erna repairs Mama Irma’s curtains with needle and thread and later, when Zaire and I return from swimming, with her own Singer sewing machine she brought with her. How people help each other here. Erna tells me that she spent six weeks in Amsterdam to help a friend whose child had cancer and died at the age of twelve. The child was in such a bad way that they decided to end her life. She was also in Rotterdam, not much better then. Her child lives in The Hague, where at least it’s clean. Magalie was in the Netherlands a long time ago, but she doesn’t like it there. I tell them that I came here for Mama Irma because Thelma wrote, ‘If anything happens, can Guus come?’ Both Erna and Magalie think it’s a good idea that I came, ‘better than looking at someone in a coffin’….. Magalie thinks I should practise Papiamentu more, then I’ll learn it better. I tell her that Mama Irma was my professoressa di Papiamentu, but she’s too weak now. Mi ta busca un nobo professoressa! Maybe I can ask Erna or Magalie to teach me in October.

At 5 p.m., I go to Habitat with Zaire. We have a nice swim and a drink, I have a cappuccino and she has a piña colada. I think we’re getting better at talking, but when I ask her what her youngest child is called, she can’t remember the name. How awful.
Early to bed, because tomorrow we have to get up at 5 a.m. MarieLouise is picking me up at 6 a.m. to walk the (thirteen) bays and see if the turtles have laid any eggs. That would be something if we saw that…